Prince: black people don’t get second chances

Prince … ‘Jimmy Page was cool, but he couldn’t keep a sequence without John Bonham behind him.’

Prince has spoken out about racism in the entertainment industry, claiming that black people aren’t given a “second chance” in film and music.

During a Mojo interview with the singer at a Caribbean island hideaway, Prince criticised the music business, explaining, “It’s box office. I can’t have something like The Great Gatsby on my hands. Didn’t you know that black people don’t get a second chance?”

“It’s like Chris Rock said: Leonardo DiCaprio can make one bad movie after another, and he just keeps going. Chris Rock makes a bad movie, and he doesn’t work again. Black people aren’t allowed to make mistakes.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Prince discussed the many influences on the forthcoming 3RDEYEGIRL album, Plectrumelectrum, which reportedly features “new music with a sense of history”. On the subject of the track TICTACTOE, he revealed that the song was inspired by a night listening to the Cocteau Twins. “We recorded it in Bryan Ferry’s studio in London, after a night of partying for which the Cocteau Twins was the soundtrack,” he explained. “You can’t understand the words of the Cocteau Twins songs, but their harmonies put you in a dreamlike state.”

Sly and the Family Stone, Joni Mitchell, Santana, Miles Davis and James Brown were also named as artists Prince and his band have drawn from. But, after being compared to Led Zeppelin during the playback, Prince wasn’t altogether taken with the likeness: “Jimmy Page was cool, but he couldn’t keep a sequence without John Bonham behind him.”

Prince has recently finished a sequence of Hit and Run dates in the UK, stopping by at a string of London venues before embarking on two Manchester dates. Read our reviews of the shows below: